


drop it like it's hot

by pearypi_e



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, character backstory, kiara's like 5-7 years old in this, the icky stuff isn't major or prominent but it can be taken that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-23 01:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30047736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearypi_e/pseuds/pearypi_e
Summary: To a child, even the unspeakable can become routine.
Kudos: 4





	drop it like it's hot

One thousand skulls had been used for it. Is that what skulls were for?

Kiara saw everything, like she was meant to. The skulls slowly piling up in the corner of the room, unassuming, until one day one of _them_ reached down and plucked a single skull from the pile. _they_ ran _their_ gnarled fingers over the bone, tenderly tracing every fracture, every blemish, every chip, before gently setting it down into what to Kiara appeared to be a large concrete bowl. She blinked, her eyes blurring. Was that bowl always there in the corner of her room? A concrete club _they_ were hefting up now, something she had always thought was fit to crush someone’s head like an overripe melon. The skull didn’t crumble with a squish, but a crunch when the pestle slammed into it, a cloud of dust floating up and forcing its way into Kiara’s closing lungs and wait was the bowl always there so close right next to her what if it saw

what

get on your knees dearest

this is a nightmare you can’t choke away

* * *

One skull at a time cracked and ground into flour for what bread or meal, belonging to who? The dust is all in her eyes so she can’t read, the mermaid can’t drag her down now, she can’t drown yet but why? The skull pile is diminishing, to her dismay. Those skulls were her witnesses, now she’s her to be forgotten, the only real human in this chamber because _they_ don’t count _they_ told her _they_ weren’t human yet she needed to make _them_ human

Snap, and the sky is darkening, or it would have been had she been able to see it. No changes, but there’s more flour and less skulls but the pale grinding hasn’t stopped, and it keeps and keeps and keeps and keeps until the skulls are but a pile of dust blending into the concrete floor and the flour is all in sacks next to her and oh look! Another dust cloud another whiteout

Snap, and Kiara wants to know where all those skulls came from. No melon-squish means the flesh is gone and the flesh is gone means the man was already dead, so where did all the dead men come from? A cemetery, all headless skeletons now? A pile of corpses no one loved enough to bury? Thinking about it makes her spine get all chilly like she’s at the bottom of the ocean. Having so many dead men in the world is bad because _they_ said so those men should be alive dead is wrong but pretty she wants to hear those melons splattering red all over the concrete

Snap, and she gets used to it even though she sort of maybe doesn’t want to. She’s passing the time by counting the skulls one by one like the ticks of the clock _they_ never thought to give her. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Crunch. She moves through time. One day she looks at the pile and she doesn’t see skulls, just rocks waiting to be ground into paste. When the time moved through her _they’d_ erode away and disappear like all her favorite things, just like _them_ when _their_ skin crinkled like worn book-pages, just like the unfamiliar faces that replaced the more-but-less familiar paper ones, just like the skulls that were added to the pile—one to compensate every loss, like coin passing from one hand to another. _They_ seemed to all be objects like that, or like a music box, and she was the only human bearing witness to it all, waiting for the clock to wind out and the tune to stop

Snap, and things are becoming dull. Life without the skulls keeping her company fades back into the distance, the grinding of the clock is the only thing rocking her to sleep, until the music really does run out. The pile of rocks (stone wall keeping _them_ away from her) is diminished and not replaced. The place where it used to sit stinks in the same way rotten flesh stinks. Even the incense can’t wash it away. There’s a bag of flour close to her again. One bag, only one. For all _their_ toils, this was all _they_ could give her? How useless _they_ were but how long ago did this all become for her

Snap, and the sack’s dumped out all over the floor. Water sprinkled all over the dust, being molded into bone-paste with _their_ fingertips. An ugly-turd shaped lump of a hag turns into a ball turns into a head turns into a face with a nose ears eyelashes turns into a replacement for all those heads in the cemetery

Snap, and to this _they_ add a tongue and teeth, covering the skull with a white lacquer the same color as Kiara’s skin. Pure, clean, and unblemished, it looked like what _they_ thought a woman's skin was supposed to look like. The cheek had a pretty curve to it, sure, and the jaw was angled quite nicely but Kiara knows it’s missing her

Snap, and she sinks back into her bed and it feels like sinking into quicksand before the cardboard corner of a book digs into the back of her skull from under her pillow. The skull is carried out. Good. Let it stay away from her please she

Snap, and she can’t fall asleep no matter how heavy the smoke in her room gets. Snap. Snap. Snap. Nothing. The skull comes back. Things are getting dull. The smoke in her room is thick, but it can’t hide the smell of something disgusting. The skull shines like human skin. She doesn’t want to identify the smell. She knows what it is and she knows she isn’t supposed to know, even if _they_ say it’s all she has 

Snap, and she’s watching _them_ build up muscle and flesh of layered gold and silver leaf, more precious and beautiful than human muscle ever could hope to be. She saw the strange ink _they_ used to etch mandalas upon the surface, glistening milky white against the metals. She saw the cinnabar with which _they_ reddened the lips, the polished jade _they_ pressed into the eye-sockets. All this she could witness clearly from her bed, and yet the desire to join in _their_ proceedings never struck her—she simply watched. She was starting to feel like participation was beneath her, if this was truly meant to be a gift, or perhaps she had felt above _them_ all this time and was only now realizing it

Snap, and she wakes up.

* * *

When the skull is given to her, she gasps with delight like a child given a new toy, or an animal presented with fresh meat.

A beautiful woman gazes at her, jade eyes and ruby smile regarding her form without the slightest hint of reproach. Her lips are painted blood-ruby, smile curling upwards like the beat of a demon’s wing. 

_They_ beckon her towards the woman. _Introduce yourself._

She presses her lips to the woman's red mouth, just like _they_ taught her to. The lacquered surface of the skull is cold and hard. Human skin.

She doesn’t pull away. 

**Author's Note:**

> the skull thingie was very loosely based off of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikawa-ryu#The_Tachikawa_Skull_Ritual
> 
> anyway ty for reading. special thanks to TungstenCat for glancing over this and giving feedback. you are not, in fact, a hack


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